FIFA President Hit With Ethics Complaint Over Relationship With Trump

FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s fawning adoration of President Donald Trump, complete with seemingly creating an award just for him, is now the subject of an ethics complaint.

The five-count complaint, filed Monday by the nonprofit advocacy group FairSquare, argues Infantino’s cozy relationship with Trump violates Article 15 of FIFA’s Code of Ethics, which requires the governing body and its representatives “remain politically neutral.”

“In offering clear support for President Trump’s political agenda at home and abroad, Mr. Infantino has repeatedly breached his duty to remain politically neutral, and done so in a way that poses a clear threat to the integrity and reputation of football and of FIFA itself,” FairSquare said.

Most visibly, Infantino last week awarded Trump the organization’s first-ever FIFA Peace Prize ― an award, FairSquare notes, Infantino appears to have both created and awarded to Trump without input from the rest of FIFA.

The complaint cites two early December reports in The New York Times that the prize “was so hastily arranged” that FIFA board members and vice presidents only learned of its existence via media reports.

“Multiple sources familiar with the process, all of whom wished to remain anonymous to protect relationships, said the Council and FIFA’s vice-presidents were not consulted or involved in the creation of a FIFA peace prize and that it was not discussed at the prior FIFA Council,” the report read. “They have also not had input into the selection criteria for deciding a recipient.”

In November, Human Rights Watch asked FIFA to specify its criteria for awarding the prize and details of how the winner would be selected. The letter went unanswered.

FIFA did not respond to a request for comment from HuffPost.

“If Mr. Infantino acted unilaterally and without any statutory authority this should be considered an egregious abuse of power,” the complaint notes.

U.S. President Donald Trump (left) and Gianni Infantino, president of the Federation International Football Association, are seen with the FIFA World Cup trophy in the Oval Office of the White House in August.

Annabelle Gordon/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In addition to the above, the complaint details what it argues are four clear breaches of political neutrality by Infantino, including:

The complaint seeks a formal investigation into Infantino’s involvement with the FIFA Peace Prize, and the decision to award it to Trump.

FairSquare program director Nicholas McGeehan told HuffPost that, while the complaint focuses on Infantino and Trump, the bigger issue is FIFA itself.

“This complaint is about a lot more than Infantino’s support for President Donald Trump’s political agenda,” McGeehan said.

“More broadly this is about how FIFA’s absurd governance structure has allowed Gianni Infantino to openly flout the organization’s rules and act in ways that are both dangerous and directly contrary to the interests of the world’s most popular sport,” he added.

Indeed, FIFA has a long and less-than-stellar record of representing the sport on the global stage.

In 2015, Swiss authorities, acting on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department, arrested nine FIFA officials on charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies spanning two decades.

The FIFA president at the time, Sepp Blatter, was not among those named in the indictment, though he was forced from office after 17 years atop FIFA as a result of the scandal.

(In a “fun” twist: The case began as an FBI probe into an illegal gambling ring the bureau believed had ties to Russian organized crime and was operated out of Trump Tower in New York City.)

Infantino assumed the role of FIFA president in 2016, only for the Justice Department to again allege the 2018 World Cup was awarded to Russia as a result of bribes, and the same goes for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.